


Luckless Romance

by 11oyd



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Best Friends, Drunk Steve, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Pre-Serum, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Skinny Steve, UST, bucky is desperately in love but also in denial, bucky pov, drunk Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 21:05:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6769870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11oyd/pseuds/11oyd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve would taste real sweet as a girl. Hell, he’d taste real sweet as a guy too. </p><p>He’s been staring at his mouth too long. Bucky blinks dazedly and looks back up, meeting Steve’s big blues. “Buy me a house,” he says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Luckless Romance

**Author's Note:**

> this is honestly a story about nothing

They’re silly drunk, stupid drunk -- Bucky hasn’t seen Steve giggling like this since he was eleven years old maybe, his thin shoulders shaking with it as he rocks forward and then back. Usually when Steve gets drunk he just gets even more fiery, swelling all up like a bullfrog, and his normally pale face gets all flushed and his eyes get bright bright; Bucky won’t lie, he spends most of his nights out hoping Steve will come with him and then spends most of his time with Steve hoping Steve will get drunk. Is he shameless? No. He has shame about it. He has lots of shame about it. He does it anyway.

“Should we take another?” asks Steve. “Let’s take another, c’mon.” He reaches for the bottle, but Bucky catches his hand first, pulling the long fingers towards him.

“God no,” he says. “You’re about to fall over. You’re about to pass out. I’m not cleaning your sick up, Rogers.”

Steve fights to pull his hand away, struggling like a cat with its claw stuck in something. “Not gonna be sick, _Barnes_. You lug. You double twisted lug nut. You wanna,” he gives up trying to get his hand away and instead gets right up in Bucky’s face, all burning hot and glitter-eyed, “fight me?” He hiccups. “Bet I could beat you. Let’s swing. Fists. Let’s swing fists.”

Bucky’s thinking: _Don’t think about it, don’t look down, don’t run your thumb hot swipe against his delicate frail wrist. Don’t be a pervert._ Steve has the best wrists, better than a girl’s wrist; Bucky can fit his whole hand around it easy, his thumb and his pinky slotting around it with room to spare. He does it now, unable to help himself, enveloping it easily, then slides his hand a little down Steve’s arm and back up, feeling the way the hairs on his arm brush up.

“Yeah, Stevie, sure,” he says, his head swimming. “I’ll fight you. Seems fair, now that you got me all good and drunk first.”

“ _You_ got _me_ drunk, asshole,” counters Steve, and Bucky shushes him primly.

“I was cheering you up,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Steve, finally tugging his arm away to Bucky’s great despair and sinking further down into the couch. Steve had been laid off -- again -- from his job at the grocer’s, and maybe they should be saving their money now instead of spending it on a handle of whiskey, but Bucky thinks it was worth it. The lazy way Steve is lolling his head now, his eyes half-closed and focused hazily on Bucky like he’s seeing something worth it, seeing something good. Yeah. Worth the money, worth the extra panic at the end of the month when he tries to scrape together enough for the rent just for this, now.

“You feel cheered up?” he prompts, fingers twitching like he might reach out again.

Steve just looks at him, tilting his head back into the ratty couch cushions with the stuffing spilling out, his mouth parting for a moment before, “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” says Bucky with a surge of something like pride. Out of all the things he’s shitty at or just average at -- schoolwork and saving money and playing billiards and even girls because he can’t seem to ever stick around with a single one of them -- out of all that, he’s always got this, making Steve feel better. No one else seems to get it, the feeling that overwhelms a person when Steve Rogers is having a miserable sick day and the only thing that makes him smile is James Buchanan Barnes, no one realizes what that feels like. Feels like a god damn walk on the moon is what it is. “And tomorrow, we’ll go buy that banana bread you like from Donna’s.”

“Bucky,” says Steve, huffing and squirming a little. “No more money. We gotta be smart.”

“Smart,” he says. “Hey, let’s take another one.”

Steve presses his lips together, looking less enthusiastic now that it’s not his idea, and then rolls his eyes and accepts the bottle first. Bucky’s eyes, filthy traitors, can’t look away from his lips wrapped around the bottle head. And when Steve swallows hard, he stares at that too, his neck and the way it moves.

And then because he hates himself, he takes a good long swig right after. It makes his throat burn, his eyes water, and he gasps a little at the end, making Steve laugh. Steve likes when he’s a better drinker than Bucky, so sometimes Bucky exaggerates, just a little. But also part of it is real because this whiskey is shit.

“It’s shit,” Steve says, like he hears Bucky’s thoughts. “Better than cough medicine though. I’m thinking, Buck, I’m thinking about one day when we can buy as much fifty year old Scotch as we want and drink a glass every night. And I’ll get you the suit, the one in the window of  Birchem’s. Whadaya want, Buck? I’ll buy it for you, whatever it is.”

Steve gets like this when he drinks -- he likes thinking about the future, of what he’d do if he had money, of how he’d spend it on Bucky. Bucky just slides down into the couch a little, his leg pressed against Steve, and thinks of a different future. He thinks of how, if they were a little drunker, he could maybe lean in and press his mouth to Steve’s and it would be fine, it would be better than fine. It’d be messy and sloppy, his lips against Steve’s; he’s always wondered if Steve was a good kisser, since he’s had so little practice. It doesn’t matter, Bucky can teach him. Bucky _wants_ to teach him. Let him be all neat and clean so that Bucky is the only one to ever make him gasp, learn his sounds of pleasure.

He almost says, _What if one of us was a girl_ , and then doesn’t, knowing it’d just make Steve mad since he’d probably assume Bucky meant _What if you were a girl_. But that’s not what he means at all. He could have been the one born a girl, it would have been nice -- he’d get to experience firsthand the way Steve gets all flustered and embarrassed and polite around girls, trying so hard to be perfect for them to make up for his size and stature. Steve could take him dancing, he could call Bucky his best girl. Steve would probably never pressure Bucky to do anything raunchy, but Bucky, girl Bucky, could press herself right up to him and kiss him hard and dirty, reaching down to touch him through his pants.

Steve would say, “Bucky, I don’t want to hurt you,” and Bucky could smile, real slow, and sink to his (her) knees.

He wouldn’t mind if Steve was the girl either though. Girl Steve would be just as fireball, just as hot-tempered and reckless and dangerous, but she’d also look damn hot in a skirt. (He thinks briefly about Steve now in a skirt and feels flushed down to his navel, hot all over.) And maybe, just maybe, Steve would finally let him take care of him if he was a girl -- Bucky would be able to do all the things for him that he can’t do right now, like pull chairs out for him and tell him how pretty he looks and buy him flowers whenever he felt like it. He’d be able to treat Steve real nice, real nice, just the way Steve deserves, god damn. Every time he tries to do something like that now, it’s like pulling fucking teeth. Steve says, _Don’t spend money on me_ , and _I can do that myself_ , and _I’m not a_ kid _, Bucky_ , but Bucky knows he’s not a kid. Just wants to take care of him sometimes.

If he was a girl, Bucky could probably do it.

Steve would taste real sweet as a girl. Hell, he’d taste real sweet as a guy too.

He’s been staring at his mouth too long. Bucky blinks dazedly and looks back up, meeting Steve’s big blues. “Buy me a house,” he says.

“A house, huh.”

“Yeah, I’d like a house.”

Steve reaches out, touching Bucky’s hair, digging his fingers in the dark locks for a moment to get past the tangles and then spreading his fingers out flat, messing up the pomade. He gets touchy when he’s drunk as well. See why Bucky tries? See why he tries? “What kinda house, pal?” He moves to draw his hand away but Bucky makes a helpless noise, tilting his head into the retreating hand and Steve stills. He cards his fingers in a little deeper again, scratching slowly at Bucky’s scalp, and Bucky melts into it, making another noise.

“Big one,” he mumbles. He’s almost tilting sideways, not wanting to dislodge the slow moving touch of Steve’s hand in his hair; he feels it down in his gut, low. “Lotsa windows. And a front yard. With a swing.”

“You don’t even know how to cut the grass,” snorts Steve, but Bucky just makes a low grunt. He doesn’t want to move. He never wants to move. “Gonna live in that big house by yourself, Buck?”

“Hell no,” he says. “You’re coming with me, right? Someone’s gotta keep paying the bills.”

“That’s me,” says Steve softly. “The one with the cash.”

His hand slows and then stills again. Bucky reluctantly cranes his head, looking up and back, somehow having slipped down past Steve on the couch. They stare at one another.

“Why do you keep me around?” asks Steve in a low voice after a moment. His eyes have darkened; post-touchy Steve is depressed Steve. His hand’s fallen out of Bucky’s hair.

Bucky says, “Steve,” in a strained voice, because Steve can’t even see, he can’t even see that he’s the greatest thing to ever happen to Bucky -- he can’t see that without Steve, Bucky is just some guy with a loud mouth and half a heart invested in the things around him. He’s only ever truly been invested in Steve.

He could do it now. He could press up and in, kiss Steve with his whole body leaning into it so that Steve can feel the way Bucky just fucking yearns for him, the way Bucky’s drunk imaginary future isn’t about being rich or successful but just about being with Steve --

And Bucky, fuck him sideways, shifts up like he might actually fucking do it when Steve says, “I think I might head off to bed,” and Bucky sags back down again. He doesn’t move to help when Steve struggles to extract himself from the couch and then at the last moment as Steve’s about to step away, his hand flashes out and catches Steve’s thin bird bone wrist.

“Hey,” he says as Steve pauses, turning back to look down at him. “I’m nothing without you, Stevie.”

Steve’s eyes tighten at the edges, his expression going all funny looking, and then he nods. “Me too, Buck. Coming to bed?”

“Soon,” he says, and Steve nods again and then Bucky lets go of his wrist and sits back, watching as the other boy walks away. Soon he will go in to their shared bed and curl around Steve and pretend it’s only for warmth -- but for now, he will sit here and dream of a future where neither one of them is a girl and anything is possible and the love is theirs, it’s theirs.

**Author's Note:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://paperweave.tumblr.com/)


End file.
